Epic Walks.

I spent most of the morning photographing lithics. I finally got my hands on a new piece of glass after the least one mysteriously broke. I say mysteriously, but I have some theories about it being an inside job. As in, inside my house. As in some member of my family. Either from the species Homo sapiens sapiens or Canis lupus familiaris.

The pictures turned out pretty well and it seems like I’ve finally managed to balance the light adequately. It’s been pretty hard getting the light from the ring flash and the light from under the light table to match so there wasn’t flare around the artifact and the it was properly balanced. The last set I had delivered were a little on the dark side. However, it seems that they’ve come back from there and thus, have become true Jedi’s.

I got through all the small-to-mid-sized artifacts and then decided to treat myself with one of my epic walks. I call them epic, because that’s what they are, at the core of their essence. It pretty much started way back in 2005 when Stacey and I developed the Titan Trek.

Due to massive flooding that year, the city had let the water level of the Glenmore Reservoir fall to almost-dry levels. Deathboxes were perched up on what were once deep sand banks. With the waters having receded, there was a solid metre of trail now leading down to the Glenmore Causeway. Stacey and I took a break from working after lunch and decided to walk down there, thinking it would be a nice thirty-minute walk.

We got back two hours later.

Turns out, that the bank was so muddy, we had to walk without shoes. Then there were the sharp bits of rock that stabbed our feet and the slippery shale that made it hard to cross the last two hundred meters to the Causeway. Once we got there, we realized we had to walk all the way back.

The thing was, we made it. It was an adventure that no one else has ever attempted since… probably because other people are just plain smarter than us. But damn, we were the first to do it and we did it!

Since then, I have been addicted to epic walks. The trick is to find places and pathways you’ve never been before and then be sure to do crazy things like, climbing down shrub-covered hillsides to see the ravines or to wade out on to the part of the Reservoir that just comes up to your knees.

I set out with Mouse at about 3:30 today and after about twenty minutes, we came across a path I’d never noticed before. It was surrounded by a pretty grandiose iron gate, but the park it led to was tiny and infested with small dogs. So we pressed onwards, coming down another street at the and found a small walkway between the houses.

We went from suburban housing to a wide open field of protected land. I had no idea that was there before. Mouse and I ran through that field a full tilt, slipping on the muddy path that others had made and narrowly missing many gopher holes. When we got to the end of the field, there was this gorgeous ravine that was just overflowing with all the Spring runoff. From there, we headed up a pathway and found an off-leash area with a view of Canada Olympic Park and the mountains to the west.

I love being outside. Thank you Spring for coming back again this year. I don’t think I can handle much more of Winter’s oppressive nature.